


hold the pieces

by Quilly



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Homestuck Secret Santa Exchange 2016, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, but nepeta chose him for a reason, equius is a hot mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 09:40:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11987190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quilly/pseuds/Quilly
Summary: Nepeta Leijon is the best moirail you could have ever asked for. Before you knew it, she became a major support column of your life.So it's a hearty blow to your system when your moirail cries.





	hold the pieces

**Author's Note:**

> Moving some stuff over from the tumbles; this was a Secret Santa exchange for tumblr user aolivep. I like how it turned out, so ta-da, moving it on over!

Your name is Equius Zahhak and this…is not your forte.

Relationships in general have never truly been your comfort zone. You prefer the silent, predictable company of wires and metal to person-to-person contact. But there’s been one exception in your life (besides your guardian, but you don’t count Arthour as a nebulous Them. He’s an Us), one talkative and adorable exception. That you’ve been desperately pale for Nepeta Leijon since your second or third conversation online is irrelevant, as is the fact that when you finally met in-person you were so afraid to touch her that you nearly wrecked the fragile friendship growing between you. But Nepeta has a superpower, and her superpower is that she makes things…easy. By the time you worked up the courage to ask her formally to be your moirail, she’d headbutted you gently and told you in no uncertain terms that it was about time, you goshdarn sillyface.

Since then it’s been gratifying, if not downright blissful. She sits on your work when you’ve been at it for too long and forces you to sleep, to eat. She knows when to let you punch something and when to stop you. She has relentlessly helped you overcome your fears of touching people, helped you practice control, even though every bruise you’ve ever made on her person made you miserable and want to quit. She encouraged you to reach out to other people, other friends, online. She coaxed your daydreams and fantasies out of you. Once you realized how much she’d reshaped you, it was far too late to go back. She is the main support of your life now.

So it’s a hearty blow to your entire system when Nepeta Leijon cries.

She is an endless well of patience and teasing and firm guidance when it comes to you. You know this. You are still baffled as to what you bring to her, and the bafflement only grows when she tries to hide her tears, scrubs at her face with the sleeve of the jacket she stole from your closet and gives you a half-hearted smile.

“Nepeta,” you say cautiously, sitting on the other side of the couch (cushion loaf, she called it once, how absurd), a full cushion between the two of you, because you aren’t sure if you are allowed to reach for her yet, “are you alright?”

“Purrfectly fine, Equius,” she says, and you hear the strain of her trying to be cheerful, but her eyes are already welling up again and it kills you. “It’s nothing.”

“Your tears are not nothing,” you say quietly, and she hiccups a laugh. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

She continues trying to smile, but her mouth buckles, and her face scrunches, and you throw caution to the wind as you scoop her into your lap, cradling her head against your chest and making the most soothing shoosh you are capable of. She lets go as you gently slide her hat from her head and pet her hair, sobbing her pump-biscuit out into your shirt, and you can’t be bothered about the tears and snot she’s getting everywhere, because the state of your laundry is so far down on your list of cares it might as well not exist. You rub circles on her back as gently as you can, as carefully as if you were touching glass, feeling the hitching of her breath and the hard knot of a fist she’s got tangled in your shirt, and you _ache_.

Her tears taper off, and she accepts a tissue box from Arthour (bless him, he is also more than you deserve) and proceeds to use up about half mopping up her face and blowing her nose. You keep stroking her hair from her face, trying to calm her, but your spine and stomach are both quivering with tension and distress. She rests her head back on the wet spot on your chest, shuddering a sigh.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, and you shake your head.

“There is nothing to apologize for,” you reply, just as softly. “Do you wish to talk about it?”

“No,” she says, “but I should.”

You say nothing, waiting for her. She takes several deep breaths, starts half a dozen sentences and breaks off before the first word is formed. You wait.

“I’m being silly,” she says, so quietly you barely hear, and you shake your head again, pressing your forehead between her horns, hugging her to you as tightly as you dare. She hiccups again, and you continue to shake your head.

“Not this time,” you murmur, and she laughs. A triumph. “Nothing that causes you to be this upset is silly.”

“I’m just sad,” she says, and you hear the tears building in her voice again. “I’m…really sad. I don’t even know why, it’s…I don’t know. I was just thinking…quadrants and friendships…talents…I don’t…I don’t have much to offer to anyone. I don’t know why I’m even…even here.”

The lack of puns scares you as much as her words. You can’t hug her tighter, you don’t want to break her, but you are desperately searching for the words, for something to assuage her baseless fears. You feel fresh warm wetness seeping into your shirt, and open your mouth. “That is foolish. You are a troll of many, many talents, and your friends enjoy your company.” You can hear how your words might be empty-sounding, and dig deeper. “I enjoy your company. You are a horrific singer, but you sing anyway, because you are brave and happy and good. You are the deadliest hunter I know. You draw and tell stories and stay in-character no matter how ludicrous the situation.” She huffs a weak laugh. You chew your lip. “I…would not be here, if it weren’t for you, Nepeta.”

She looks up at you then, big meowbeast eyes red-rimmed and filled with green tears, frowning. You hold eye contact, and shrug one shoulder. “It’s true. I would not be in this place, emotionally or physically. I would not have…acquaintances.” You are still hesitant about calling them friends, but you’re getting there. “I would have my robots, and my Arthour, and be completely miserable.”

“I’m pawsitive you’d get along without me,” she says, the return of her cat puns not masking the exhaustion behind her words. You shake your head emphatically, hair swinging into her face. She blows on it, her face scrunching again but more adorably.

“I would not,” you say. “I would likely have already gotten into several fights with my neighbors. Perhaps killed, though my strength is not an idle tool. Numbers can overcome strength.” You squeeze her once, as hard as you dare. “Regardless…who would call me in the middle of the day because her OTP is canon?”

She laughs again, more fulsome, and you smile, because it sounds like her old self.

“Nepeta, I am…so pale for you,” you say, with minor pausing to blush. “You are wonderful and spunky and good. You’re…the meowbeast’s sleep garb.”

This time Nepeta laughs so hard she doubles up, gasping for air. “Spunky,” she wheezes. “Meowbeast—sleep garb!”

“It’s an expression,” you say with feigned haughtiness.

“It’s a cute expression,” she replies, and shifts around in your lap, looking you in the eyes. You thumb a trace of wetness from her cheek. Her skin stretches more than you intend, but she doesn’t wince. “You’re a cute expression, too.”

“You make no sense,” you deadpan, and she sticks her tongue out at you. “Cease that immediately. It’s degrading.”

“Your face is degrading,” she says.

“Is not.”

“Is so!”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes it is!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

By the end of this customary exchange, she is laughing again, smiling, her tears a forgotten stain, and your spine relaxes. Her arms loop around your neck, and she hugs you hard, clutching you for dear life. You allow yourself to soothe your hands along the delicate lines of her arms and thorax.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and returns the sentiment you so ardently expressed a few moments ago.

It’s been perigees and said many times, but you still pop into a warm sweat and blush.


End file.
